Today we have a guest post from Sam Luce– who has a very visual blog. This is what he has to share…

Our church is still very new to the whole milestone concept. We are planning on adding some milestone traditions in the future in the areas of dedications and baptisms. Right now one of the ways we best partner with parents is by being very intentional during school transitions. What I love about the milestone model is it seeks to connect parents/kids/church during times when parents are most open to advice, direction and guidance.

One of the those windows for a family is when their kids enter Kindergarten and when they enter Jr. High. We know they are going though lots of change so we try to work with the parents. We talk about the kids who are moving areas and give them our recommendation but ultimately let them know that they are the parents and they know their kids. Most kids transition fine but for those kids who are struggling in some way, it really helps them stay connected. Before we started being intentional about this, we had a huge drop off rate of kids entering and lots of kids leaving kids ministry and not going to Youth group. After moving to this plan, we saw our retention rate reach 70%-80%.

The fact that we are thinking about and express concern for their kids during a very difficult time helps parents know that when we say we want to partner with them we mean business.

What do you do to help kids and parents transition? What other milestones would you like to talk about?